The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss Part 7

You very kindly express the wish that you could bear some of my school drudgery with me. I would not give you that, but you should have love from some of these warm-hearted damsels, which would make you happy even in the midst of toil and vexation. I can't think what makes my scholars love me so. I'm sure it is a gift for which I should be grateful, as coming from the same source with all the other blessings which are about me. I believe my way of governing is a more fatiguing one than that of scolding, fretting, and punis.h.i.+ng. There is a little bit of a tie between each of these hearts and mine--and the least mistake on my part severs it forever; so I have to be exceedingly careful what I do and say. This keeps me in a constant state of excitement and makes my pulse fly rather faster than, as a pulse arrived at years of discretion, it ought to do. I come out of school so happy, though half tired to death, wis.h.i.+ng I were better, and hoping I shall become so; for the more my scholars love me, the more I am ashamed that I am not the pink of perfection they seem to fancy me.

_Evening._--I have just come up here to my lonely room (which, if I hadn't the happiest kind of a heart in the world, would look right gloomy) and have read for the third time your dear, good letter, and all I wish is that I could tell you how I love you, and how angry I am with myself that I did not know and love you sooner. It seems so odd that we should have been born and "raised" so near each other and yet apart. You say you are a believer in destiny. So am I--particularly in affairs of the heart; and I hope that we are made friends now for something more than the satisfaction which we find in loving. I am in danger of forgetting that I am to stay in this world only a little while and then _go home._ Will you help me to bear it in mind?... How must the "Pilgrim's Progress" interest a mind that has never learned the whole book by rote in childhood. I have often wished I could read it as a first-told tale, and so I wish about the xiv. of John and some other chapters in the Bible.

Your incidental mention that you have family prayers every evening produced a thousand strange sensations in my mind. I hardly know why.

Did I ever tell you how I love and admire the new Bishop Johns? And how if I _am_ a "good Presbyterian," as they say here, I go to hear him whenever and wherever he preaches. I don't think him a _great_ man, but he has that sincerity and truthfulness of manner which win your love at once. [4] ... What nice times you must have studying German! I dreamed the night I read your account of it that I was with you, and that you said I was as stupid as an owl. I have the queerest mind somehow. It won't work like those of other people, but goes the farthest way round when it wants to go home, and I never could do anything with it but just let it have its own way, and live the longer. They are having a nice time down in the parlor wors.h.i.+pping Miss Ford, the light and suns.h.i.+ne of the house, who leaves to-morrow for Natchez, and I am going down to help them. So, good-night.

_To the same. April 24._

Since I wrote you last we have all had a good deal to put our patience and philosophy and faith to the test, and I must own that I have been for some weeks about as uncomfortable as mortal damsel could be.

Everything went wrong with Mr. Persico, and his gloom extended to all of us. I never spent such melancholy weeks in my life, and became so homesick that I could hardly drag myself into school. In the midst of it, however, I made fun for the rest, as I believe I should do in a dungeon; and now it is all over, I look back and laugh still.

We had a black wedding--a very black one--in my schoolroom the other night; our cook having decided to take to herself a lord and master. It was the funniest affair I ever saw. Such comical dresses! such heaps of cake, wine, coffee, and candy! such kissings and huggings! The man who performed the ceremony prayed that they might _obey each other,_ wherein I think he showed his originality and good sense, too. Then he held a book upside down and pretended to read, dear knows what! but the Professor--that is to say, Mrs. P.--laughed so loud when he said, "Will you take this _wo-_man to be your wedded _husband_" that we all joined in full chorus, whereupon the poor priest (who was only the s.e.xton of St.

James') was so confused that he married them over twice. I never saw a couple in their station in life provided with a tenth part of the luxuries with which they abounded. We worked all day Sat.u.r.day in the kitchen, making and icing cake for them, and a nice frolic we had of it, too. Do you love babies? We have a black one in the lot whom I pet for want of something on which to expend my love.

When I find anything that will interest the whole family, I read it aloud for general edification. The girls persuaded me into writing a story to read to them, and locked me into my room till it was done. It was the first love-story I ever wrote, for hitherto I have not known enough about such things to be able to do it. This reminds me that you asked if I intend forgetting you after I am married. I have no sort of idea what I shall do, provided I ever marry. But if I ever fall in love I dare say I shall do it so madly and absorbingly as to become, in a measure and for a season, forgetful of everything and everybody else.

Still, though I hate professions, I don't see how I can ever cease to love you, whatever else I forget or neglect. There is a restlessness in my affection for you that I don't understand--a half wish to avoid enjoyment now, that I may in some future time share it with you. And yet I have a presentiment that we may have sympathy in trials of which I now know nothing.

I am ashamed of myself, of late, that these subjects of love and matrimony find a place in my thoughts which I never have been in the habit of giving them, but people here talk of little else and I am borne on with the current. I think that to give happiness in married life a woman should possess oceans of self-sacrificing love and I, for one, haven't half of that self-forgetting spirit which I think essential.

I am glad you like the "Christian Year," and I see you are quite an Episcopalian. Well, if you are like the good old English divines, n.o.body can find fault with your choice. Mr. Persico was brought up a Catholic but professes to be a nothingarian now. For myself, this only I know that I earnestly wish all the tendencies of my heart to be heavenward, and I believe that the sincere inquirer after truth will be guided by the Infinite Mind. And so on that faith I venture myself and feel safe as a child may feel, who holds his father's hand. Life seems full of mysteries to me of late--and I am tempted to strange thoughtfulness in the midst of its gayest scenes.

How true was the "presentiment" described in this letter, will appear in her correspondence with the same friend more than a quarter of a century later.

_To Anna S. Prentiss, Richmond, June 1, 1843_

I believe you and I were intended to know each other better I have found a certain something in you that I have been wanting all my life. While I wish you to know me just as I am, faults and all, I can t bear to think of ever seeing anything but the good and the beautiful in your character, dear Anna, and I believe my heart would break outright should I find you to be otherwise than just that which I imagine you are. I don't know why I am saying this; but I have learned more of the world during the last year than in any previous half dozen of my life, and the result is dissatisfaction and alarm at the things I see about me. I wish I could always live, as I have hitherto done, under the shelter of my mother's wing.... I ought to ask your pardon for writing in this horrid style, but I was born to do things by steam, I believe, and can't do them moderately. As I write to, so I love you, dear Anna, with all my interests and energies tending to that one point. I was amused the other day with a young lady who came and sat on my bed when I was sick (for I am just getting well from a quite serious illness), and after some half dozen sighs, wished she were Anna Prentiss that she might be loved as intensely as she desired. This is a roundabout way of saying how very dear you are to me. What chatter-boxes girls are! I wonder how many times I've stopped to say "My dear, don't talk so much--for I am writing in school."

_June 27th_--Mr. ---- brought "The Home" to me and I have laughed and cried over it to my heart's content. Out of pure self-love, because they said she was like me, I liked poor Petra with the big nose, best of the bunch--though, to be sure, they liken me to somebody or other in every book we read till I begin to think myself quite a bundle of contradictions. I have a thousand and one things to say to you, but I wonder if as soon as I see you I shall straightway turn into a poker, and play the stiffy, as I always do when I have been separated from my friends. I am writing in a little bit of a den which, by a new arrangement, I have all to myself. What if there's no table here and I have to write upon the bureau, sitting on one foot in a chair and stretching upwards to reach my paper like a monkey? What do I care? I am writing to _you_, and your spirit, invoked when I took possession of the premises, comes here sometimes just between daylight and dark, and talks to me till I am ready to put forth my hand to find yours. Oh! Anna, you must be everything that is pure and good, through to the very depths of your heart, that mine may not ache in finding it has loved only an imaginary being. Not that I expect you to be perfect--for I shouldn't love you if you were immaculate--but pure in aim and intention and desire, which I believe you to be.

_29th._--Do you want to know what mischief I've just been at? There lay poor Miss ----, alias "Weaky" as we call her, taking her siesta in the most innocent manner imaginable, with a babe-in-the-wood kind of air, which proved so highly attractive that I could do no less than pick her up in my arms and pop her (I don't know _but_ it was _head_ first), right into the bathing-tub which happened to be filled with fresh cold water. Poor, good little Weaky! There she sits shaking and s.h.i.+vering and laughing with such perfect sweet humor, that I am positively taking a vow never to do so again. Well, I had something quite sentimental to say to you when I began writing, but as the spirit moved me to the above perpetration of nonsense, I've nothing left in me but fun, and for that you've no relish, have you?

I made out to cry yesterday and thereby have so refreshed my soul as to be in the best possible humor just now. The why and wherefore of my tears, which by the way I don't shed once in an age, was briefly the withdrawal from school of one of my scholars, one who had so attached herself to me as to have become almost a part of myself, and whom I had taught to love you, dear Anna, that I might have the exquisite satisfaction of talking about you every day--a sort of sweet interlude between grammar and arithmetic which made the dull hours of school grow harmonious. She had a presentiment that her life was to close with our school session, from which I couldn't move her even when her health was good, and she says that she prays every day, not that her life may be lengthened, but that she may die before I am gone. I am superst.i.tious enough to feel that the prayer may have its answer, now that I see her drooping and fading away without perceptible disease. The only time I ever witnessed the rite of confirmation was when the hands of the good bishop rested upon her head, and no wonder if I have half taken up arms in defense of this "laying-on of hands," out of the abundance of my heart if not from the wisdom of my head. Well, I've lost my mirthful mood, speaking of her, and don't know when it will come again.

I have taken it into my head that you will visit Niagara on your way home from the South and have half a mind to go there myself. Did your brother bring home the poems of R. M. Milnes? I half hope that he did not, since I want to see you enjoy them for the first time, particularly a certain "Household Brownie" story, with which I fell in love when President Woods sent us the volume.

Here follow a few entries in her diary:

_May 1._---Holiday. Into the country all of us, white, black, and gray.

Sue Empie devoted herself to me like a lover and so did Sue Lewis, so I was not at a loss for society. My girls made a bower, wherein I was ensconced and obliged to tell stories to about forty listeners till my tongue ached. _July 18th._--Left Richmond. _Aug. 2nd._--Left Reading for Philadelphia. _5th._--Williamstown and saw mother, sister and baby.

_16th._--President Hopkins' splendid address before the Alumni--also that of Dr. Robbins. _18th._--Left Williamstown and reached Nonantum House at night. Saw Aunt Willis, Julia, Sarah, Ellen, etc. _22nd._--Came home, oh so very happy! Dear, good home! _23rd._--Callers all day, the second of whom was Mr. P. There have been nineteen people here and I'm tired! _25th._--What _didn't_ I hear from Anna P. to-day! _31st._--Rode with Anna P. to Saccarappa to see Rev. Mr. and Mrs. H. B. Smith--took tea at the P.s and went with them to the Preparatory Lecture. I do nothing but go about from place to place. _Sept. 1st._--Just as cold as cold could be all day. Spent evening at Mrs. B.'s, talking with Neal Dow. _9th._--Cold and blowy and disagreeable. Went to see Carrie H. Came home and found Mr. P. here; he stayed to tea--read us some interesting things--told us about Mary and William Howitt. _10th._--Our church was re-opened to-day. Mr. Dwight preached in the morning and Mr. Chickering in the afternoon.

September 11th she marked with a white stone and kept ever after as one of the chief festal days of her life, but of the reason why there is here no record. The diary for the rest of the year is blank with the exception of a single leaf which contains these sentences:

"Celle qui a besoin d'admirer ce qu'elle aime, celle, don't le jugement est penetrant, bien que son imagination exaltee, il n'y a pour elle qu'un objet dans l'univers."

"Celui qu'on aime, est le vengeur des fautes qu'on a commis sur cette terre; la Divinite lui prete son pouvoir."

MAD. DE STAEL.

III.

Her Views of Love and Courts.h.i.+p. Visit of her Sister and Child. Letters.

Sickness and Death of Friends. Ill-Health. Undergoes a Surgical Operation. Her Fort.i.tude. Study of German. Fenelon.

The records of the next year and a half are very abundant, in the form of notes, letters, verses and journals; but they are mostly of too private a character to furnish materials for this narrative, belonging to what she called "the deep story of my heart." They breathe the sweetness and sparkle with the morning dew of the affections; and while some of them are full of fun and playful humor, others glow with all the impa.s.sioned earnestness of her nature, and others still with deep religious feeling. She wrote:

My heart seems to me somewhat like a very full church at the close of the services--the great congregation of my affections trying to find their way out and crowding and hindering each other in the general rush for the door. Don't you see them--the young ones scampering first down the aisle, and the old and grave and stately ones coming with proud dignity after them?... I feel now that "dans les mysteres de notre nature aimer, _encore aimer,_ est ce qui nous est reste de notre heritage celeste," and oh, how I thank G.o.d for my blessed portion of this celestial endowment!

Love in a word was to her, after religion, the holiest and most wonderful reality of life; and in the presence of its mysteries she was--to use her own comparison--"like a child standing upon the seash.o.r.e, watching for the onward rush of the waves, venturing himself close to the water's edge, holding his breath and wooing their approach, and then, as they come das.h.i.+ng in, retreating with laughter and mock fear, only to return to tempt them anew." Her only solicitude was lest the new interest should draw her heart away from Him who had been its chief joy. In a letter to her cousin, she touches on this point:

You know how by circ.u.mstances my affections have been repressed, and now, having found _liberty to love,_ I am tempted to seek my heaven in so loving. But, my dear cousin, there is nothing worth having apart from G.o.d; I feel this every day more and more and the fear of satisfying myself with something short of Him--this is my only anxiety. This drives me to the throne of His grace and makes me refuse to be left one moment to myself. I believe I desire first of all to love G.o.d supremely and to do something for Him, if He spares my life.

Early in December her sister, Mrs. Hopkins, with an infant boy, came to Portland and pa.s.sed a part of the winter under the maternal roof. The arrival of this boy--her mother's first grandchild--was an event in the family history. Here is her own picture of the scene:

It was a cold evening, and grandmamma, who had been sitting by the fire, knitting and reading, had at last let her book fall from her lap, and had dropped to sleep in her chair. The four uncles sat around the table, two of them playing chess, and two looking on, while Aunt f.a.n.n.y, with her cat on her knees, studied German a little, looked at the clock very often, and started at every noise.

"I have said, all along, that they wouldn't come," she cried at last.

"The clock has just struck nine, and I am not going to expect them any longer. I _knew_ Herbert would not let Laura undertake such a journey in the depth of winter; or, at any rate, that Laura's courage would tail at the last moment."

She had hardly uttered these words, when there was a ring at the doorbell, then a stamping of feet on the mat, to shake off the snow, and in they Came, Lou, and Lou's papa, and Lou's mamma, bringing ever so much fresh, cold air with them. Grandmamma woke up, and rose to meet them with steps as lively as if she were a young girl; Aunt f.a.n.n.y tossed the cat from her lap, and seized the bundle that held the baby; the four uncles crowded about her, eager to get the first peep at the little wonder. There was such a laughing, and such a tumult, that poor Lou, coming out of the dark night into the bright room, and seeing so many strange faces, did not know what to think. When his cloaks and shawls and capes were at last pulled off by his auntie's eager hands, there came into view a serious little face, a pair of bright eyes, and a head as smooth as ivory, on which there was not a single hair. His sleeves were looped up with corals, and showed his plump white arms, and he sat up very straight, and took a good look at everybody.

"What a perfect little beauty!" "What _splendid_ eyes!" "What a lovely skin!" "He's the perfect image of his father!" "He's _exactly_ like his mother!" "What a dear little nose!" "What fat little hands, full of dimples!" "Let _me_ take him!" "Come to his own grandmamma!" "Let his uncle toss him--so he will!" "What does he eat?" "Is he tired?" "Now, _f.a.n.n.y!_ you've had him ever since he came; he wants to come to me; I know he does!"

These, and n.o.body knows how many more exclamations of the sort, greeted the ears of the little stranger, and were received by him with unruffled gravity.

"Aunt f.a.n.n.y" devoted herself during the following weeks to the care of her little nephew. Her letters written at the time--some of them with him in her arms--are full of his pretty ways; and when, more than a score of years later, he had given his young life to his country and was sleeping in a soldier's grave, his "sayings and doings" formed the subject of one of her most attractive juvenile books.

A few extracts from her letters will give glimpses of her state of mind during this winter, and show also how the thoughtful spirit, which from the first tempered the excitements of her new experience, was deepened by the loss of very dear friends.

PORTLAND, _December 9, 1843._

Last evening I spent at Mrs. H.----'s with Abby and a crowd of other people. John Neal told me I had a great b.u.mp of love of approbation, and conscientiousness very large, and self-esteem hardly any; and that he hoped whoever had most influence over me would remedy that evil. He then went on to pay me the most extravagant compliments, and said I could become distinguished in any way I pleased. Thinks I to myself, "I should like to be the best little wife in the world, and that's the height of my ambition." Don't imagine now that I believe all he says, for he has been saying just such things to me since I was a dozen years old, and I don't see as I am any great things yet. Do you?

_Jan. 3d, 1844._--Sister is still here and will stay with us a month or two yet. Her husband has gone home to preach and pray himself into contentment without her. Though he was here only a week, his quiet Christian excellence made us all long to grow better. It is always the case when he comes, though he rather lives than talks his religion. I never saw, as far as piety is concerned, a more perfect specimen of a man in his every-day life.

Do you pray for me every night and every morning? Don't forget how I comfort myself with thinking that you every day ask for me those graces of the Spirit which I so long for. Indeed, I have had lately such heavenward yearnings!... Why do you ask _if_ I pray for you, as if I could love you and _help_ praying for you continually and always. I have no light sense of the holiness a Christian minister should possess. I half wish there were no veil upon my heart on this point, that you might see how, from the very first hour of your return from abroad, my interest in you went hand-in-hand with this _looking upward_.

_Jan. 22d._--We have all been saddened by the repeated trials with which our friends the Willises are visited this winter. Mrs. Willis is still very ill, and there is no hope of her recovery; and Ellen, the pet of the whole household--the always happy, loving, beautiful young thing--who had been full of delight in the hope of becoming a mother, lies now at the point of death; having lost her infant, and with it her bright antic.i.p.ations. For fourteen years there had not been a physician in their house, and you may imagine how they are all now taken, as it were, by surprise by the first break death has threatened to make in their peculiarly happy circle. Our love for all the family has grown with our growth and strengthened with our strength, and what touches them we all feel.

_Feb. 8th._--How is it that people who have no refuge in G.o.d live through the loss of those they love? I am very sad this morning, and almost wish I had never loved you or anybody. Last night we heard of the death of Julia Willis' sister, and this morning learn that a dear little girl in whom we all were much interested, and whom I saw on Sat.u.r.day only slightly unwell, is taken away from her parents, who have no manner of consolation in losing this only child. There is a great cloud throughout our house, and we hardly know what to do with ourselves. When I met mother and sister yesterday on my return from your house, I saw that something was the matter of which they hesitated to tell me; and of whom should I naturally think but of you--you in whom my life is bound up; and, when mother finally came to put her arms around me, I suffered for the moment that intensity of anguish which I should feel in knowing that something dreadful had befallen you. She told me, however, of poor Ellen's death, and I was so lost in recovering you again that I cared for nothing else all the evening, and until this morning had scarcely thought of the aching, aching hearts she has left behind. Her poor young husband, who loved her so tenderly, is half-distracted.

Oh, I have blessed G.o.d to-day that until He had given me a sure and certain hold upon Himself, He had not suffered me to love as I love now!

It is a mystery which I can not understand, how the heart can live on through the moment which rends it asunder from that of which it has become a part, except by hiding itself in G.o.d. I have felt Ellen's death the more, because she and her husband were a.s.sociated in my mind with you. I hardly know how or why; but she told me much of the history of her heart when I saw her last summer on my way home from Richmond, at the same time that she spoke much of you. She had seen you at our house before you went abroad, and seemed to have a sort of presentiment that we should love each other.

But I ought to beg you to forgive me for sending you this gloomy page; yet I was restless and wanted to tell you the thoughts that have been in my heart towards you to-day--the serious and saddened love with which I love you, when I think of you as one whom G.o.d may take from me at any moment. I do not know that it is unwise to look this truth in the face sometimes--for if ever there was heart tempted to idolatry, to giving itself up fully, utterly, with perfect abandonment of every other hope and interest, to an earthly love, so is mine tempted now.